Planning Week 6-7

Set Up a Sales Prospecting System

The one central key to success in any business, particularly a new one, is to identify what specific consumers or businesses you believe are most interested in your selling message. Find them wherever you can. Share your compelling selling story with them. And land some as new  customers or clients.

This decision, more than any other, centers around the experience you bring to your new business – whom you have worked with in the past; what industry connections you have; and most specifically what names and email addresses you can confidently list as “interested friends” or even “prospects”.

How To Do This

Describe the needs/wants of your desired customer/client.

Go back to your Marketing Plan Summary and read over descriptions you entered for the following:

• The problem your business proposes to solve.
• Your unique solution to this problem.
• Your target customer description.

Your VI Coach will review with you what you previously wrote for each of these sections of your Marketing Plan Summary to derive a succinct but informative description of what type of customer or client you wish to attract to your business. This is often called “needs based marketing”.

Focus on your most compelling product or service.

You may only intend to offer one product or service as you launch your business. If so, this should have been well-thought-out during your marketing planning work to evaluate exactly why it will  be compelling to your prospective customers/clients. If, on the other hand, you intend to start business offering a range of products or services, we strongly recommend that you initially focus on just one of these to promote and support.

Outcome of this Step

At the end of the first step in setting up your sales prospecting process you should be able to write down and recite a short but clear description of what you feel is the prospective client or customer who is best suited to benefit from what you are selling.

Describe who you feel are your most immediate competitors. and how you are superior to what they offer.

These may be businesses or individuals located in your local community or they may be anywhere in the U.S. if your business primarily sells online.

Return to your Marketing Plan Summary to Your Competitive Advantage section. You should have at least spoken of who you feel is most immediate set of competitors in this section. If your business relies upon your local community for new customers/clients, then we recommend that you do a web search.

Use a Web Search

The reality today is that whether you are a consumer or a business, when you start looking for help with a problem or  a source for a specific service or product, you most likely start by doing a search on Google or Yahoo. So do your prospective customers.

So, if you have not done this already, do a Web search right now.

Let us show you an example.

The Business: Provides bookkeeping services and help with QuickBooks software for business in the Chicago area.

Search term: bookkeeping services in Chicago, or QuickBooks experts in Chicago.

Outcome of this Step

Take some time to click open several of the links on the first page of search results you see when you enter your search phrase. Make written notes about each as you browse their website, e.g. Where are they located? What is the headline at the top of their homepage? How clearly do they describe the benefits of buying from them? Do they show pricing?

Create Contact List

In Planning Weeks 4-5 we provided directions on how to set up an account Constant Contact and how to properly prepare to use this service by creating your initial list of contacts.

We asked you to shoot for a goal of at least 50 individuals or businesses on the list.

NOTE: As you move forward in using Constant Contact  you may find that you are discovering new groups of prospects who belong to a singular organization or whom you meet at a particular public marketing event. In Constant Contact you can easily create as many different lists to contain contact information as you wish. This is know as “list segmentation”.

Opt In Form

Also in Planning Weeks 4-5 we presented the tactic of including an Opt In form on your website to encourage site visitors to add their names and email addresses to your lists in your Constant Contact account. A great way to use this is when you meet someone at a distance, such as over the phone or during a webinar you present, if they want to know more about your company invite them to visit your website and enter their name and email using an Opt In button that is placed at the top of each page on your site.

Develop Your Plan to Connect & Share

Once you can describe your ideal customer, think about how you can connect with some prospective customers/clients in your marketplace.

Here are some effective ways to do this.

Email

Reach out to friend, family, neighbors and past work colleagues who you think may be interested in what you doing. Send each person an email  introducing your new business and get their take on it…no selling at this point.

Media Story

Submit an article to your local newspaper announcing the opening of your business.

Click here to read an expert article on how to write an attention-getting media story.

Webinar/Workshop

Develop an informative online webinar where you share knowledge about your specialty and promote it through social media and personal contacts.

With the advent of widespread use by many, many people of Zoom, you can easily access an easy-to-use online platform to present a webinar (a common technique is to prepare a series of PowerPoint slides and use the Screen Share feature on Zoom to present them to participants).

Your Promotional Schedule

You need to communicate with prospective customers in  a number of ways.

While email marketing probably gives you the most control of any marketing tactic, it is also substantially overused by many companies today.

The smart way to roll out your marketing communications is to start with people or business owners you already know. Use your name recognition to get your message opened and read.

Here is a communication process that works for many new businesses.

Step 1 – Grand Opening Email

Send email to people who already know announcing the opening of your business and detailing the primary services you offer. Invite each email recipient to visit your website. And invite them to say hello by return email.

Step 2 – Special Information/Education offering.

Create a “top 10” or “how to” list and turn it into a pdf file. You load it into your website and make it available for a site visitor to download. Or, you can attach it to an email to our list.

Step 3 – Send a new business announcement to your local newspaper

Most community newspapers are continually looking for news on local businesses. Tell them about yours and it can a great way to introduce your business to your larger community.

Step 4 – Post Regularly on Social Media

If your service offerings are consumer-oriented, then posting on your Facebook business account will probably serve you best

If your service offerings are business-related, then posting on your LinkedIn account will probably best your best way to communicate.

You can also regularly write short articles, known as blog posts, and share them will contacts in your email list by announcing each new post and providing a link from the email to the blog post on your website.

Step 5 – Network

Find organizations in your desired marketplace who are interested in the information and tactics your company offers. Participate in social and educational events, many of which are offered at no cost.

Outcome of this Step

Ask yourself: What are you learning about how prospects see using your product or service? Should you tweak your selling story to emphasis a new point? Should you alter or add a new service package?

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Great Online Resource

Engage
“7 Ways to Get Your Prospects to Respond to You”
Click here to read the article.